In case you didn't see the notice, the end of chapter 1 was edited in response to the wisdom of my dear reviewers. (Thank you and bars of chocolate to RussianPrincess, Wicked Seraphina, Pokemongirl99, and ellina HOPE). Reviews keep me writing, so please continue to leave them.

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Emma Bucket had a secret.

It wasn't one of those pathetic little common secrets, such as "when I'm home alone, I eat brown sugar straight" or "this one time I stole a pack of gum from the corner store." This was a bona fide BIG SECRET. For years she had lived in fear of someone, anyone, finding it out. She imagined if someone knew, especially the small group of certain someones that composed her family and another mysterious someone whose factory they happened to inhabit, she would die of shame.

Her secret was as follows: Ever since that glass elevator had come crashing through the unsuspecting roof of their little house and Willy Wonka had stepped out, she had harbored a small but deep-rooted crush on the eccentric candymaker. It wasn't entirely baseless. Willy was rich, powerful, charming (at times), and above all made the most delicious and sensual candy in the entire world. In addition, he was handsome in a kind of eerie and ambiguous way which was somehow also distinctively masculine.

She had assumed that her little girlish twinge of attraction towards him would fade after a few weeks of living in close proximity with him at the factory. Unfortunately, the exact opposite happened. If anything, that little spark of excitement she felt every time he swept into the house or met her in the Chocolate Room while she was gathering dessert only grew stronger. There was probably something in the candy. What was it Charlie had told her? Something about endorphics or polymorphins or some such nonsense. She had never been good at science.

Of course, this irritating weed of a crush was nothing compared to the enormous depth and breadth of her love for her husband. Mr. Bucket was her entire life, which made it even more shameful that she couldn't seem to shake her attraction to Willy.

Willy. No, Mr. Wonka. It must always be Mr. Wonka. Yes, Mr. Wonka. No, Mr. Wonka. Would you like more cranberry sauce, Mr. Wonka? Please make sure you bring Charlie back by nine o'clock, Mr. Wonka.

Calling him Willy was practically begging for extra attention. Calling him Willy was like admitting that she wanted to know what it would feel like to run her fingers through his silky, unnaturally perfect hair. Calling him Willy was like announcing her secret to the world.

While Mr. Bucket had still been alive, her crush was like a little bitty skeleton in her closet that no one ever had to know about. She was still confident in the strength of her love for Randolph. There was absolutely no way she would ever act on it anyway, and she was sure Wil—er—Mr. Wonka did not feel anything towards her.

After Mr. Bucket's death, however, her secret hung over her head like some massively dead and foul-smelling animal carcass. She felt sure that Mr. Bucket had known. She had nightmares wherein Randolph threw himself back into the flaming toothpaste factory in anguish, believing that his wife no longer loved him. Her guilt became immense. Every time she smiled at one of Willy's bizarre anecdotes or laughed at one of his jokes, she immediately felt that she was being unfaithful to her dead spouse. A little voice inside her head would nag her continually. Your husband has been in the ground for hardly a year and already you're pining after another man? He was the father of your child! His parents still sleep under your roof! In the same bed as your parents, no less! What kind of widow are you?

And yet, it really all came back to Charlie. He was the most precious person to her in the entire world. What would he think of her if he knew that his mother had a crush on his mentor, a man he looked to as a brother and perhaps even a surrogate father?

Despite all this, Mrs. Bucket was incapable of shaking her feelings. Especially when Mr. Wonka did something so downright nice as comforting her on the anniversary of her husband's death and accompanying them to the cemetery (now there's true irony). It was a massive shock to her that he had actually followed through.

Wonka's personal limousine had picked them up at a hidden back-entrance to the factory (Mrs. Bucket was exceedingly glad he hadn't convinced them to take the glass elevator—it didn't make her feel nauseous, but rather exposed) and the ride had been solemn and unremarkable. At the cemetery, dressed in all black just as he had been the day Charlie convinced him to let the family live in the factory, he had stood politely off to the side, giving them space to mourn but close enough to see when they were ready to leave.

Mrs. Bucket had felt a sense of finality after that visit to her beloved husband's grave. On the ride back, she realized it felt as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. The guilt and grief she had felt for the last year had not disappeared, but it had diminished. She understood completely what was to be done; the time for mourning was over, and now she needed to move on.

As she had watched the cemetery shrink behind them out the window of the limo, she grasped Charlie's hand in her own and squeezed it slightly.

"Mum?" He asked. "Is something wrong?" He turned to look at her with concern. Willy looked at her inquisitively over his apprentice's head (something which had become increasingly difficult for him to do since Charlie's growth spurt) and raised his eyebrows.

Mrs. Bucket found her eyes drawn irrepressibly to his curious violet gaze. "No, dear," she replied with a small smile. "I think that for the first time in a long while, I'm really all right."

Willy smelled cake.

He was, for the most part, a candy-oriented kind of guy. He was firmly of the belief that at least two to three of one's daily meals should consist solely of candy. That did not mean, however, that he was averse to any other kinds of sweet things, especially ones into which candy could be incorporated. Cake was one of those things.

He drifted into the Bucket household practically suspended in the air, floating on delicious, warm whiffs of baking cake smell like some sort of character from Looney Tunes.

Mrs. Bucket, who was standing at the counter in a floral apron, humming to herself and licking cake batter off a spoon, didn't notice his arrival until he popped up directly next to her with an enthusiastic "Whatcha makin', Mrs. Bucket?"

She jumped and blushed guiltily for a moment at being caught in a somewhat childish practice that she had never shaken. "A cake for Grandma Georgina. It's her birthday today."

"Mm hmm…" he murmured distractedly, squinting into the nearby bowl critically. Mrs. Bucket shifted nervously, feeling as if she was under some examination by the chocolatier.

Her embarrassment was soon overshadowed by surprise however, when Willy peeled off one of his latex gloves, dipped a pristinely clean exposed finger into the batter-coated mixing bowl, and sampled some of the mushy remains.

He smacked his lips a few times experimentally and screwed up his face in consideration.

"Not bad," he concluded after a few moments. "Butterscotch?" She nodded in assent. "I would've gone with chocolate, though. Nothing truly says 'happy birthday' like chocolate. In fact, nothing really says anything like chocolate, since it is for the most part incapable of speech. You're going to have chocolate frosting, of course?"

"Well, er…" she considered showing him the tub of store-brand vanilla frosting she had bought this morning and reconsidered. "I was planning on making some later on."

"Excellent! Well, there's no present like the time. Wait, strike that. Reverse it. Thank you." He washed his bare hand absently in the sink and donned his glove again. With a flick of the wrist, he whipped open one of the kitchen drawers and pulled out Mrs. Bucket's spare apron (how did he know where that was?), this one lilac with worn lace trim. After putting it on and tying a perfect bow behind his back, he gave the kitchen a cursory glance and put his hands on his hips with the air of a man completely in his element.

"We'll need a bowl—the biggest one you have…and a measuring cup."

Mrs. Bucket, still looking at him somewhat uncertainly, complied. Willy took the measuring cup from her and examined it carefully, scrubbed the entire thing thoroughly with scalding hot water and soap, and examined it again, this time apparently finding it satisfactory.

"Excellent. Follow me, if you please, my dear woman." He turned sharply and breezed out of the house, leaving Mrs. Bucket to hurry after him, still lugging the heavy bowl.

She found Willy Wonka crouched on the bank of the chocolate river, peering into the brown depths, apparently deep in consideration.

"Does the chocolate here look stagnant to you? I've been suspicious for the past few months that we have some slow areas where chocolate's pooling and not moving along for days. It's entirely losing all of the effects of the waterfall. The waterfall is most important, makes it light…frothy…we have to keep it frothy…can't be turning out stale, flat chocolate…" He trailed off, staring distantly at the waterfall, obviously deep in thought.

After several minutes, Mrs. Bucket began to get exasperated. Had he dragged her out here with this god-awfully heavy bowl so she could discuss faulty liquid dynamics with him? She cleared her throat loudly.

"Wha?" His head jerked around and he appeared to notice her presence for the first time. These lapses in and out of reality had been far more frequent when they had first arrived, and though they had diminished, they were still a normal aspect of life with Mr. Wonka. "Ah, yes, Mrs. Bucket. Chocolate frosting…chocolate frosting, you see is as much of an art to make as chocolate itself. Full of…nuances, as it were. Perfect chocolate frosting is a truly admirable goal to strive for in life. If you would, please."

He motioned for her to crouch next to him and, after carefully setting down the bowl between them, she did.

"With a cake the size of dear Grandmother Georgina's…two layers, am I correct? Yes. With a cake that size we'll need precisely a cup of my own personal recipe of extra light, frothy, and delicious melted chocolate first off." Gingerly, Wonka lowered the flawlessly clean measuring cup into the river and filled it, pausing to bring it under his nose and take a gigantic breath of chocolate fumes which he let out with shuddering pleasure, before holding it towards Mrs. Bucket.

"Would you like to do the honors of measuring it out?"

Caught up in the sense of enormous importance and ceremony Willy had assigned to this procedure, Mrs. Bucket respectfully accepted the cup and, after a questioning look at Willy, carefully poured excess chocolate back into the river until its level had descended to the 1 cup mark.

This was, indeed, a ceremonious occasion. In the four years Mrs. Bucket had lived in the factory, Willy had never permitted her to take chocolate directly from his precious river. In the first week they'd been there, he had once found her about to scoop a generous amount out with a saucepan for some brownies. In a semi-hysterical state, he had pulled her frantically away from the bank and lectured her circularly for nearly three hours on the importance of the purity of his chocolate.

Willy nodded in satisfaction at her work, indicated she should pour the chocolate into the bowl and began the short walk back to the house.

"Mr. Wonka, why exactly are you showing me how to make chocolate frosting?" Mrs. Bucket asked somewhat amusedly as they reentered the house.

He turned to her with a slight smirk and twinkling eyes. "Well, I could hardly let you use that horrid store-bought vanilla stuff, could I?"

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Next time: Cooking with Willy Wonka…mmm….I'd like to get in on some of the action…

Obligatory Disclaimer: Everyone in this story belongs so somebody else. Please don't sue me.

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